Why HD DVD Lost – 10.5 Million PS3s February 20, 2008
Read more Blu-ray , Entertainment , Gizmodo UK , HD DVD , Movies , PS3
There are sure to be different reasons why HD DVD failed to win the HD movie spat with Blu-ray but there’s no doubting that what the biggest was: 10.5 million PS3 consoles.
Recent sales figures show that 10.5 million PS3s with in-built Blu-ray drives have now sold worldwide. That does not include sales of dedicated Blu-ray players. When you compare that to estimated sales of just 1 million HD DVD players, you can see the scale of the problem the format faced. PS3 sales in the UK alone recently topped 1 million.
With the PS3 predicted to outsell the Xbox 360 in 2008 – no doubt aided somewhat by the end of HD DVD – it seems we’ll all be Blu, on one platform or another, by Christmas. -Martin Lynch
Editor | Martin Lynch
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Comments
If only the xbox 360 came with HDDVD capabilities included, the story could have been very different!
But were those 10.5 million PS3s all being used for Blu-ray film titles?
I'm guessing many people didn't specifically trade up their regular DVD players for the HD formats, but a next gen console with the playback capability built in was just too hard to resist.
Microsoft's HD-DVD drive promotion a few months back was too late with many holding on until the format war was a bit clearer.